“Alas! must it ever be so? Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever?” – Lord Lytton

Apparently a lot of non-technical people have never heard of linux, and if they have… they think that you have to have Windows to install it.
Well, while linux is a completely separate operating system that runs on its own, you now can install it directly via Windows, without the CD media. With Wubi, you can install Ubuntu in a folder, and if you don’t like what you see, then you can uninstall it and no harm, no foul.
No need to change your bootloader, no need to set up partitions. For those that want to be technical about it, it does actually set up a virtual disk, and it does add an entry in the Windows bootloader. You technically can set up other flavors also, but it’s defaulted to Ubuntu.
Open source… for Windows.

This is going to sound like a dumb question, but can you tell us why one would want to install Ubuntu on a Windows machine? What are the advantages to doing so? (I undertand that the basic answer is so that you can run linux, but what I’m wondering is what can I do running Linux on my PC that I can’t do with Windows?)

This is going to sound like a dumb question, but can you tell us why one would want to install Ubuntu on a Windows machine? What are the advantages to doing so? (I undertand that the basic answer is so that you can run linux, but what I’m wondering is what can I do running Linux on my PC that I can’t do with Windows?)

You wouldn’t usually. But for those that don’t know anything about linux, but would like to try it out… it’s a way to do it “easily”.
In essence, it creates a dual-boot machine without much configuration thought.
What can you do with linux? Well, overall, you have access to a lot more software and stability. I don’t even bother with Windows anymore except for testing.
In essence, there’s not really any good reason to run linux, just like there’s not really an reason to use a Mac. Same difference there. From my perspective though? Base Linux and Mac use less memory than Windows, and that’s enough to take the leap when efficiency is involved.

You wouldn’t usually. But for those that don’t know anything about linux, but would like to try it out… it’s a way to do it “easily”.
In essence, it creates a dual-boot machine without much configuration thought.
What can you do with linux? Well, overall, you have access to a lot more software and stability. I don’t even bother with Windows anymore except for testing.
In essence, there’s not really any good reason to run linux, just like there’s not really an reason to use a Mac. Same difference there. From my perspective though? Base Linux and Mac use less memory than Windows, and that’s enough to take the leap when efficiency is involved.